


Grey Area

by nightoftheghouls



Category: Marvel, Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616, The Incredible Hulk (Comics)
Genre: Bruce Banner Has DID, Bruce Banner-centric, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Joe Fixit says trans rights and here's why, Trans Female Character, but not really bc this is a joe fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-23
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-13 12:02:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29651037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightoftheghouls/pseuds/nightoftheghouls
Summary: Dr. McGowan has a cigarette break, only to be interrupted by Banner's alter, Joe Fixit. The conversation does not go the way she thought it would.-Basically, an exploration of the parallels between Joe and Charlene, and how the experience of being an alter parallels to the experience of being trans. Set during Immortal Hulk's Shadow Base arc.
Relationships: Bruce Banner & Charlene McGowan, Joe Fixit & Charlene McGowan
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	Grey Area

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to my favorite past-time, looking way too far into the funny gray man and getting very sad about it. Except I honestly think a lot of this is the product of authorial intent, especially with the language used in issue #41. Please note that this was written before #43, so the location of Site G is not accurate. So it goes.
> 
> Also, a disclaimer: I am not part of a system, and while I am nonbinary, I have not transitioned socially or medically. As such, while I have put considerable effort into portraying these issues with taste and compassion, I am liable to screw up. If something in here is inaccurate or offensive, please let me know so I can rectify it. 
> 
> With that said, thank you to my dear friend Neil ( @corvuss ) for sensitivity reading and for providing insight on the experiences of both of these wonderful characters. He is an insanely talented writer and artist with a massive body of Hulk-centric work, so please check him out and show him some love.

Being outside Shadow Base was not the most advisable idea. Sure, Site G was completely hidden, even from the other sites, but one could never be too careful. One moron with a drone could spell the end of the entire operation.

Well, actually, since she left her lab coat inside, she probably just looked like some weird lady smoking a joint in the woods, which was mostly true, aside from the joint part. Alas, it was hard to get ahold of that sort of thing when you weren’t allowed in public, so it was a good thing she wasn’t particularly interested in it. She had work to do after all, she couldn’t afford to take long breaks. A cigarette or two took up just the right amount of time, and gave her the excuse to see something that wasn’t coated in isopropyl alcohol. Something green, but not the Hulk-y kind of green.

“Be careful, Doc, those’ll kill ‘ya.” A voice interrupted Charlene’s reverie. Ugh. Speak of the Devil and he shall appear.

Well, actually, no, he wasn’t the Devil, not at the moment. Currently he was Joe Fixit, former Gray Hulk and current pain in everyone’s ass. What was once a footnote in her research on Banner had become a common fixture in Shadow Base, coming around seemingly whenever Banner was tasked with casual conversation. It was a shame; she would like to have some kind of friendship with him outside of work. Still, it was a little funny to see Banner’s body dressed like a beach bum. She wondered vaguely where he was getting the clothes from, and if he had made some kind of compromise with Banner to allow it.

“So will my bad posture. Or gamma radiation. Or being a ‘domestic terrorist’,” she replied. He chuckled.

“Lucky me, I don’t gotta worry about all that.” Joe grinned that way only he did, all gums, looking like he wanted to sell you something. “Mind if I bummed one off ‘ya? Banner used to have this big professor pipe, but I dunno where he’s hiding it these days.”

Deciding it was best to pick her battles, she held open her pack for him to take from, and brought her lighter up to his lips. He mumbled a “thank you” and took a long, thoughtful first drag, holding it in a few seconds before releasing it with a contented “ah.” Smoking weirdly suited him, McGowan thought, what with his noir-esque persona. He looked more Tarentino than he did Robert Aldrich, though, these days.

They stood next to each other for a while, silent aside from their breathing and the birds in the sky.

“So,” Joe said. “Trans rights, huh?”

Charlene blinked.

What?

Was he…?

Christ, she wasn’t getting paid enough.

“...Quit while you’re ahead, Joe,” she said as calmly as possible, though judging by his laughter, she wasn’t too successful.

“Aw well, can’t blame a guy for trying!” He shrugged with open palms. “It’s been lonely since Bets flew the coop! Get it, _flew the coop?_ ” Charlene scoffed and turned around, her arms crossed. She wasn’t going to dignify that with a response. Joe seemed to realize this, his laughing coming to a sharp halt.

“...Hey, I wasn’t makin’ fun of ‘ya, y’know. I mean, I knew I didn’t have a chance in hell anyway, but still. Not tryna be a bigot or a creep or anything.” She couldn’t see his face, but he sounded uncharacteristically honest. “Just think it takes real chutzpah to do what you did, what you’re doin’. I get it, people wanting to be themselves.”

There was...some kind of emotion in his voice, but she couldn’t really place it. Yet, she wanted to. Call it scientific curiosity.

“I have to say, I didn’t take you for a socially conscious type,” she replied somewhat lamely. Maybe a bit cold, but being a decent human being wasn’t something she needed to thank him for.

“Every dog has his day,” Joe quipped, taking another drag. “Like I said, I get it. I, uh, I can empathize, if you could believe it.”

Charlene hummed in response. She honestly wasn’t sure if she _did_ believe it, based on what she knew about him. On the other hand, the other three members of the system had all shown a great deal of empathy, even if it usually manifested as righteous, burning anger. She also began to recognize that tone of his-- the tone men like him always used, like he wanted to talk about something, but didn’t want to admit it outright. 

She always was a bit of a bleeding heart, too much for her own good.

“Really? How so?” She tilted her head, trying to balance sounding both emotionally detached and willing to listen. How did Samson do this? Well, according to Joe and Betty, he didn’t, and she can see why.

“Well… it might not be in a girl or guy sorta way, but I’ve been in those kinds of positions before. I mean, way back when, pretending to be someone I wasn’t was basically my job. People kept telling Banner to grow up, be a man for once, but he couldn’t do that to save his life, so I had to cover for him. Not outta the kindness of my heart, mind you-- this was a matter of survival, _my_ survival as much as his. I didn’t really know _what_ I was back then, just that I wasn’t him. I could do a mean impression, but I wasn’t him. I didn’t look like him, I didn’t think like him, didn’t sound like him, but I thought, what else could I be, y’know? Hell, I didn’t even have a name. Didn’t have a name for a long time.”

The longer he spoke, the more shocked she became; the more she ached, for him and for herself. She cleared her throat.

“...Yeah. I didn’t have a name for a long time, either. And I know there’s all these stories about _always knowing_ , but I’ve honestly never met anyone like that. I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t know why. Everyone kept telling me I was this person, though, so I just...tried to ignore it, I guess. Be normal.” She put a hand to her side as the other took another drag, collecting herself. Maybe she was naive, but she believed he was telling the truth, and so he deserved the same in turn. “When did you realize, do you think?”

“Definitely in college. Lots more _grown up_ stuff for me to take part in there, so I could drop the act more. I never liked Banner before, but I really started hated him around then. Didn’t know why some schmuck like him got to be the star of this stupid little life, why I was just the understudy. I did some real mean shit to him, Doc, not gonna lie. Ripping up his papers, telling professors to shove it, that kinda thing.” He hummed, clearly not as guilty about it as he may have wanted to be. “See how he likes it, y’know? To not be in control of anything. But alas, Brucie went off to build a bomb, and I guess I wasn’t needed anymore.”

“Then there was this big fuckin’ gap. I dunno what happened. I mean, some shit I remember, but it wasn’t really fully me, I was just kinda backseat driving, I guess. But then I had my hands on the wheel. One second I was some guy in a Banner suit, the next I was-- shit, Doc, I was _me._ My own body. Maybe not winning any beauty pageants, but I was strong, Real strong. Like, nobody gonna push me around ever-a-fuckin’-gain strong. And Banner-- Banner was _gone_. Like he never fuckin’ existed in the first place. My whole life just dropped into my lap, just like that.”

He smiles as he speaks, his grey eyes almost becoming a sparkling silver, his voice breathless with joy. Charlene realized then that she had never seen any of them smile before this, not a real one. _Just like that._ New body, new life, the right the way this time.

“I’d be in a lot less debt if it were that easy for me. Heh.” She says, thinking out loud.

“Ah, shit, Doc, I didn’t mean ‘ta--” Joe started to scramble.

“You didn’t do anything. Besides, if I was never in debt, I’d never be here,” Charlene shrugged, smiling lightly. 

“Bein’ an ecoterrorist?” He asked, eyebrow raised. “What’s that gotta do with debt?”

“ _Saving the world_ , not ecoterrorism.” She corrected. She was pretty sure he knew that she meant it, cause his mouth closed, deciding against whatever he was going to say. “And, you know, I think it might be prudent to do some research on the prison industrial complex if you’re involved with this revolution business.”

“I ain’t involved in no revolution business, and clearly I’m a dumbass who needs educating.” He sounded irritated. Unsurprising. Men like him don’t like not knowing things.

“...Like I said, it wasn’t as easy for me. The science we have now is pretty good, but it's expensive as hell, especially back then. I didn’t have any insurance to cover it, and if a place was actually willing to hire someone with such a _controversial lifestyle,_ they definitely weren’t willing to bankroll it.”

“So you got into the life, huh,” Joe said, eyebrows raised.

“I suppose so,” she answered. “I didn’t want to do it. It felt so-- selfish to me. The people around me, they were working to support their families, to pay rent, to _survive_ , and I was just trying to, what, feel better about myself? I was making things that could ruin people’s lives, kill them, even, because I felt like being _prettier?_ ”

“Excuse my french, but that’s a crock of shit, Doc,” Joe responded, curt and cold.

“ _What_ was that?”

“You heard what I said. Think like a person instead of an egghead-- you say you’re around people doing bad shit to survive. Desperate people, so desperate they’ll forget their precious goodwill towards men to get a chance to live.” He squints, gesticulates, suddenly antsy. “But not you. Everyone else is trying to survive, but you’re just being selfish. That make any fucking sense to you?”

She clenched her jaw and said nothing.

“Jesus christ, you and Banner will stub your toes and find some reason why ‘da _capitalism_ did it, but if it could actually make you feel like you’re an okay person, suddenly you need to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. And look, I don’t exactly know or care much about all that crap, but I know this-- if the world tries to put you down, you spit in their eye and do whatever the fuck you can to live. And I mean really live, because if what you had going on was anything like I had, it wasn’t living.”

He stared at her, eyes glowing in the shade. She moved a leg to back up, but then stood still. His face scrunched up, breaking his gaze with an annoyed growl, a hand in his hair.

“...Stop looking at me like that, damn it. I wasn’t-- I didn’t mean to get all in your face like that. I just got...I dunno. I dunno what I got.” He stared at nothing in particular, looking around at everything but her.

He looked lost. Lost in a way she had never seen him look, a way he probably avoided showing at all costs.

 _Be a man for once._ That’s what his job was. To be a man, an abused child's idea of a man, the kind of man nobody could hurt.

 _Men like him._ That’s what she kept saying; yet she knew how cruel it could be, to have to be a man like him. She knew how much it could break someone.

It took her a moment, but she found her voice again.

“It’s--it’s alright, Joe. You just...surprised me.”

“Classy guys don’t go around scaring girls,” he mumbled. 

“You didn’t _scare_ me--” Almost not a lie. “I just never had anyone challenge me on that.”

“Yeah, well, maybe you shouldn’t listen to people who never had to fight for anything. And I mean really fight, not some sportsmanly crap that everyone respects.”

“Maybe you’re right,” she said, crossing her arms again. “I guess you’d know about doing bad things to survive.” Oof, not the best phrasing. “Um, I--I interrupted your story. Keep going.”

He blinked at that like it was the first time anyone had ever told him to keep talking. Honestly, knowing him, it might have been. Still, after a deep breath, he continued.

“...Yeah, I was on my own. For the first time in my life I _had_ a life. And it was a damn good one, as I’m sure you’ve been told. Life of blood ‘n luxury in the greatest city on Earth. Fuck Ohio-- Las Vegas is where I’m from.” He smiles again, joy slightly muted by smug pride. Well, maybe he earned that, just a little. Joe took a drag, staring out into the nothing, before turning back to look at her. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t wanna, but how’d you get your name?”

Now it was her turn to blink. The Joe that Leonard told her about didn’t ask people questions, didn’t care enough to know. Maybe, Charlene thought, Leonard doesn’t know Joe at all. She’d been lied to enough times in her life to know when she was being a sucker, and now wasn’t one of those times.

So she told him.

“It’s fine; thank you for being polite, though,” she said. “Contrary to what you might think, it wasn’t a Glen-to-Glenda sorta thing. It was actually the name of a girl from a picture book I had as a kid: Little Charlene and her Special Machine. It wasn’t anything awe-inspiring-- little girl makes a machine that can do anything, but always does it literally. Like, you tell it to draw a bath, and it paints a picture, that sort of thing.I always thought that if I made a machine like that, I’d make it much more user-friendly.”

“Heh, that’s sweet. Real sweet. And, well, you sure do make some special friggin’ machines.” He chuckles good-naturedly, pausing for a second. “I was named after Mighty Joe Young, y’know, the big-ass gorilla? King Kong, but shitty?”

Charlene covered her mouth.

“Aw, c’mon, yer allowed to laugh! Fitting for a bonehead like me, huh? Guess I gotta count my lucky stars I _wasn’t_ named Kong. Kong Fixit, aka the Hulk: that’s just way too much to unpack.”

With his permission she did, in fact, laugh, Joe giggling a little himself.

“But yeah, I didn’t choose it myself, really. Mike Berengetti, the guy I worked for, he gave it to me. Said I reminded him of his favorite giant ape, well, before I came along.” He licked his lips, brow furrowing. “It’s really...it’s really something, y’know? Having a name, after all that time. Like-- I’m finally somebody. I’m real. Y’know, Doc?”

Charlene blinked hard, and nodded. She did know. She knew very, very well.

“He was like a father to me. No, fuck that, he _was_ a father to me. Everything I have, I owe to him.” He wasn’t smiling anymore. “Couldn’t last though. ‘Course it couldn’t. Not for me. Banner came back for his sad shitty life. I fought him with everything I’ve got, though. Make no mistake. Maybe I coulda won, if Samson didn’t pull that shit with us.”

“Leonard? W-what did Leonard do?” She wasn’t smiling either. In fact, she was angry. Sad and angry, because as much as Banner meant to her, as much as she rationally knew why he’d take back control, as much as she read on Fixit’s file, none of it made this fair.

“Not important. It’s stupid and complicated and not worth talking about. What’s important is I quit fighting for the spotlight. Banner and Salad-Brain did enough of that on their own, and putting me in the mix made it goddamn impossible to control. I came up for air when I could, but I didn’t push my luck. I thought, hey, I knew who I was now, had some good times to look back on, had more than I deserved to have, honestly--”

“You did deserve it.” She interrupted him, staring him down with wet, brown eyes. “You--you deserve it as much as I do. _Everyone_ deserves to be who they are.”

Now it was his turn to be stunned silent. He simply stared back, seemingly parsing what had been said to him. She didn’t have to wonder this time: she knew for a fact that nobody had told him that before. The bastards.

“--Well…” He swallowed, staring off again, hands in his pockets. “Things just ain’t that simple. It’s not...it ain’t all bad. Banner actually wants to talk to us, now. Figures that this screwy brain of ours is set up this way for a reason, that we all have a part to play. We’re a system, that’s the jargon for it. I agree with him, actually. This isn’t his life, or my life, or any of those green guys’ lives. It’s _our_ life. All of ours. We gotta share, or it ain’t a life worth living. Tough shit, but hey, since when are things easy for us? So, we’re sharing now. I get my time, they get theirs, and it honestly ain’t too bad. Except…”

“Except…?”

“ _C’mon_ , Doc. Look at me. I spend all these years being nobody, then I get to be someone, be _me,_ not some moron in a Banner-suit. Then I get sidelined again, and I wait and wait and fuckin’ wait, and finally, fucking _finally_ , it seems like things are really gonna work out, teamwork makin’ the fuckin’ dream work…”

“...but I’m back in the Banner-suit. I still don’t get to be me. _Still._ ” His hands fall to his sides, resigned.

Charlene opened her mouth to speak, but she found herself stammering, speaking in half-sentences, making calculations more to herself than to him, trying to find some kind of solution. Joe put a hand up, lowering it in a calm-down motion.

“Look, I ain’t asking for your pity. I know that this is what every other ‘other guy’ in the world’s gotta deal with, and that this is probably karma for all the bad shit I’ve done. It’s not what I want, but,” he gives that grin again, the old one, all gums, all performance. “Hey, I’m making it work. It’s nice to get some sun every once in a while, and it makes a lotta things more convenient. Nice to be able to go about my business without everyone making a production out of it, got a lot more wardrobe options, too,” He shrugs before straightening back up, an intense, almost intimidating look on his face. “And I promise you this, Doc, on Berengetti’s grave: we may have the same face, but I will make damn sure that anyone with eyes or ears can tell the difference. I’m Joe Fixit, and they’re all gonna know who I am.”

It’s not long before she finds herself grinning, spite and pride and piss and vinegar.

“I’m holding you to that, Fixit. I take promises seriously.”

And he grins back the same way.

“Yeah? So do I.”

“Let me make _you_ a promise, then: things are...well, I guess _busy_ is a word for it, and I don’t know how much time it’s going to take, but we’re getting your body back.”

For a flash, there’s something resembling shock, maybe even gratitude, but it’s gone in an instant, and he mirrors her yet again.

“You are one hell of a woman, Doc. Anyone ever tell you that?”

“On occasion.”

“Still, I dunno how smart it was to make a promise like that. Once you get a look at my _real_ mug, there’s no way you’ll be able to resist me.”

“You know I can vaporize you, don’t you?”

“If you vaporize me, you won’t be able to keep your promise!”

“Why not? You’ll just get back up anyway. I might even be able to get tissue samples from your gross hulk-slime.”

“Now _that_ hurts my feelings. I have a condition, y’know.” He chuckles, glancing at the end of their cigarette butts. “Well, you better get moving then. You got an even more packed schedule now.”

“I do better under pressure,” she said, turning her head back to the bases’ entrance. “I’ll see you next time, alright?”

“Next time?” Joe cocked his head.

“Yeah, next time,” she replied. “You do owe me a cigarette, after all.”


End file.
